Sarah Ruth Hammond
Darren Dochuk (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780226509778
- eISBN:
- 9780226509808
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226509808.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, History of Religion
This chapter assesses the life and career of Herbert J. Taylor, the president of Club Aluminum Company. A devout Methodist who believed that God called laymen as well as clergy to Christianize the ...
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This chapter assesses the life and career of Herbert J. Taylor, the president of Club Aluminum Company. A devout Methodist who believed that God called laymen as well as clergy to Christianize the world, Taylor devised a system of philanthropy through which he could change his society and nudge his nation back to God. With twenty-five percent of Club Aluminum stock, he created the nonprofit Christian Workers Foundation, which would fund several evangelical enterprises. In order to align, in principle and statement, his faith to his business, and demonstrate to the world what businessmen could do for God, he devised the “Four-Way Test.” A statement of core values according to which he pledged to run his business, the Test also served as a tool for evangelizing and unifying Christian businessmen around a sense of higher calling, and legitimating business practices as fair and Godly. In both his business and his philanthropic outreach Taylor sought to bring conservative Protestantism into the public sphere and map out a future for the nation in which evangelical leaders cut from the corporate mold could incite widespread revivalLess
This chapter assesses the life and career of Herbert J. Taylor, the president of Club Aluminum Company. A devout Methodist who believed that God called laymen as well as clergy to Christianize the world, Taylor devised a system of philanthropy through which he could change his society and nudge his nation back to God. With twenty-five percent of Club Aluminum stock, he created the nonprofit Christian Workers Foundation, which would fund several evangelical enterprises. In order to align, in principle and statement, his faith to his business, and demonstrate to the world what businessmen could do for God, he devised the “Four-Way Test.” A statement of core values according to which he pledged to run his business, the Test also served as a tool for evangelizing and unifying Christian businessmen around a sense of higher calling, and legitimating business practices as fair and Godly. In both his business and his philanthropic outreach Taylor sought to bring conservative Protestantism into the public sphere and map out a future for the nation in which evangelical leaders cut from the corporate mold could incite widespread revival
Albert L. Park
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- November 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780824839659
- eISBN:
- 9780824869434
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Hawai'i Press
- DOI:
- 10.21313/hawaii/9780824839659.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Asian History
Why and how did Korean religious groups respond to growing rural poverty, social dislocation, and the corrosion of culture caused by forces of modernization under strict Japanese colonial rule ...
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Why and how did Korean religious groups respond to growing rural poverty, social dislocation, and the corrosion of culture caused by forces of modernization under strict Japanese colonial rule (1910-1945)? Questions about religion’s relationship and response to capitalism, industrialization, urbanization, and secularization lie at the heart of understanding the intersection between colonialism, religion, and modernity in Korea. Yet, getting answers to these questions has been a challenge because of narrow historical investigations that fail to study religious processes in relation to political, economic, social, and cultural developments. In Building a Heaven on Earth, Albert L. Park’s studies the progressive drives by religious groups to contest standard conceptions of modernity and forge a heavenly kingdom on the Korean peninsula to relieve people from fierce ruptures in their everyday lives. The results of his study will reconfigure the debates on colonial modernity, the origins of faith-based social activism in Korea, and the role of religion in a modern world. Building a Heaven on Earth, in particular, presents a compelling story about the determination of the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), the Presbyterian Church, and the Ch’ŏndogyo to carry out large-scale rural movements to form a paradise on earth anchored in religion, agriculture and a pastoral life. It is a transnational story of leaders from these three groups leaning on ideas and systems from countries, such as Denmark, France, Japan, and the United States, to help them reform political, economic, social and cultural structures in colonial Korea. This book shows that these religious institutions provided discursive and material frameworks that allowed for an alternative form of modernity that featured new forms of agency, social organization, and the nation. In so doing, Building a Heaven on Earth repositions our understandings of modern Korean history.Less
Why and how did Korean religious groups respond to growing rural poverty, social dislocation, and the corrosion of culture caused by forces of modernization under strict Japanese colonial rule (1910-1945)? Questions about religion’s relationship and response to capitalism, industrialization, urbanization, and secularization lie at the heart of understanding the intersection between colonialism, religion, and modernity in Korea. Yet, getting answers to these questions has been a challenge because of narrow historical investigations that fail to study religious processes in relation to political, economic, social, and cultural developments. In Building a Heaven on Earth, Albert L. Park’s studies the progressive drives by religious groups to contest standard conceptions of modernity and forge a heavenly kingdom on the Korean peninsula to relieve people from fierce ruptures in their everyday lives. The results of his study will reconfigure the debates on colonial modernity, the origins of faith-based social activism in Korea, and the role of religion in a modern world. Building a Heaven on Earth, in particular, presents a compelling story about the determination of the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), the Presbyterian Church, and the Ch’ŏndogyo to carry out large-scale rural movements to form a paradise on earth anchored in religion, agriculture and a pastoral life. It is a transnational story of leaders from these three groups leaning on ideas and systems from countries, such as Denmark, France, Japan, and the United States, to help them reform political, economic, social and cultural structures in colonial Korea. This book shows that these religious institutions provided discursive and material frameworks that allowed for an alternative form of modernity that featured new forms of agency, social organization, and the nation. In so doing, Building a Heaven on Earth repositions our understandings of modern Korean history.
